For the most part college recruiting is like a jigsaw puzzle with 100,000 pieces and sometimes some of the pieces don’t fit or even worse some of the pieces are missing.
Any parent or high school student athletes who are getting involved with the college recruiting process for the first time, my advice to you is to have plenty of money and give yourself plenty of time to make the college recruiting process work for you.
I thought I would come up with some ideas that could help revolutionize the college recruiting process.
1. Give high school coaches more time to properly help student athletes with the college recruiting process. I think it is almost impossible for a high school coach, who may also work as a full-time school teacher, to effectively work with student athletes and their parents in the day to day details of college recruiting. I believe the high school coach should be given an extra hour or two per day towards college recruiting.
2. The NCAA should ease up on the rules on when college programs can come out and evaluate high school student athletes. The reason I say this is to prevent talented student athletes from slipping through the cracks of the college recruiting process. I believe if college programs had more time to evaluate a larger number of student athletes, it would be a huge benefit for the college programs and the student athletes.
3. Give parents more control and input in the college recruiting process. Maybe a parent can work closely with the high school coach with college recruiting. For example, let’s say your daughter plays on the softball team and all the parents who come out to support the team would perhaps like it if a parent could be some sort of liaison between the parents and the coaches and could assist the coaches with college recruiting.
4. I believe information is power; if more resources were available to parents about the college recruiting process then maybe there would not be as many problems. Maybe at the beginning of the school year, there could be a week-long seminar about the college recruiting process. Many school districts could put their financial resources together and bring in college recruiting experts to discuss various ways to make the college recruiting process work. If parents and high school coaches had more information and resources, it would effectively improve how student athletes are getting exposure to college programs.
5. Employ or bring back old coaches who may have retired whose job could be to assist in college recruiting. There are many ex-high school and college coaches who could come in or maybe on a volunteer basis assist high school coaches with recruiting. Who better to help understand the college recruiting process than maybe a former college coach who has knowledge on how the college recruiting process will work. There are a lot of former coaches out there who are retired from school district or from coaching in general but just don’t want to sit around the house watching the grass grow. This would be an excellent opportunity for them to stay involved with young people.
Final thoughts: These ideas may not be totally unique but should give everyone something to think about on how we could change college recruiting. The high school student athlete should not have their career end at the high school level. Student athletes of all talent levels should be given an opportunity to be all that they can be at the college level.
There could be more creative ways to improve the college recruiting process from the player’s perspective, from the high school coach’s perspective and clearly from the parent’s point of view. If all parties can work together and set aside egos and stupidity, then the players will be the ultimate winners in all of this.
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